Emily’s eyes are closed.

Afloat in her mind she sees the ceiling: greenish plaster, a color like green tea, thickened with the marks of the trowel, cracked in the corners. Her knuckles blanch. George’s body heat flickers against her skin. The bed underneath her drifts, borne on slow currents of light and time and darkness. His breath spells out words against the side of her face. A wind coils in through the open window, down the walls and across the floor, slinking in off the land, carrying with it a scent of damp moss.

His fingers, her fingers, winding up and around each other, through each other, drawing tight. Holding on.

Sixteen. I was…sixteen. It was the year of my discontent, he murmurs, a smile unfolding across her skin, pressing into her temple. Do you believe me?

She doesn’t. She smiles to herself, sleepy and filled up and made content with good food and clean skin and new soft clothes, light clothes made for days spent in the sun. Spread out across the rumpled green blanket, Emily feels tired out, weighed down, made still by the stasis of land. Her body feels lazy.

The walls are the color of emeralds. Milky ones, the ones her mother insists are real; the clear green flawless ones are grown in laboratories, not fake but cheap, common. She stirs on the sheets. The ceiling like tea, verdigris of the lampshade smelling like forgotten blood. This whole room is green, she sighs. I want to know about your mother. Tell me about her.

He squeezes Emily’s hand. Lynn Elizabeth Cabot Foyet, he whispers it, her name bursting into Emily’s consciousness like overripe fruit. The fingers blanch, ripening with blood at the tips. It hurts a little, squeezes against the bone. She hisses in breath. She went to Sarah Lawrence, she wanted to be a painter but her father wouldn’t allow it. She wanted to be a writer too, an artist, but you know, she just wasn’t any good at it. He twists around, stretches out over Emily’s body. He arches like a cat, crawling, bringing his face to her knuckles. He brushes them with his mouth. She was good at going to parties, getting the rich boys to look at her. He smiles into them. She wanted to be a lot of things, I think, but she wasn’t. He looks up at her. I don’t think these are the things you want to know.

I guess not. Emily points her toes toward the window, flexes them. She slides one leg over the other. How much do you know about her?

He lets go of her hand and moves up over her, his shadow palpable, landing on her skin. He props himself up on his forearms. Emily smiles up at him, her eyes closed, her chin tilted like she is waiting for a kiss. He plants one wrist on either side of her head. Her body is loose and soft on the bed, her knees turned to one side. The bed isn’t a very comfortable one, the mattress smells damp but not moldy, it’s lumpy, the frame creaking against each shift in weight. She spreads her arms out to the edges. It creaks now, the springs groaning beneath the points of his elbows as he positions his knees. I’ll do it if you put your hands on me. Her lips soften, part a little. He nuzzles the words into her hair. His laugh is gravid and hot. I’ll tell you about my mother if you touch me.

Emily laughs, a bright sound, giggling, each peal chasing the other around the inside of the room. It’s so Freudian, she giggles. Really, George. I mean really. She plucks the hem of his shirt away from his skin. Her fingertips slide up past his waistband. The skin comes alive beneath her, moves with breath, pulls away from the softness of her touch. She hears the breath break over his smile as she uses the very centers of her fingertips, stroking him there, with the raised and whorled origins of her prints. Her belly shakes with mirth. He lets out a deep and quivering sigh. His breath rushes, loud and booming, into her ear. She gathers up the hem. Take this off, she whispers.

He settles his weight on her thighs. He straightens up, lifting the shirt over his head, and she slits open her eyes and looks through her lashes at the way he arches, his belly tightening. She planes her hands up along the crests of his hipbones. He drops the shirt. Her fingers tuck into his waistband and she pulls; he rocks on his calves, one hand loose down the back of her wrist. The year of your discontent, she murmurs. That’s what you were saying.

It is. He glides his hands down her forearms and back up. It wasn’t because we came here. I wanted to. George holds on to her wrists. There was a Portuguese maid. She made me curious.

Of what? Emily hears her voice, the shift beneath what would be soft, innocent, but for the sharpness, making itself ready in the pit beneath her voice. She opens her eyes. A hooded look crosses his face and she feels tight, awkward. He smiles, a sunny grin reflecting brittle shards of light. She was an old woman, he speaks to her like she’s a child, a much-beloved, soft, cosseted little girl. It stirs up gooseflesh. It wasn’t that kind of curiosity. She talked about the islands, how jagged they are, the black rocks, the hot springs. The breath of the monster, she said. His ire, boiling the waters. She had a way with words. George takes Emily’s hand, puts it below his ribs, presses her fingers into his diaphragm. Beaches of blackened teeth, jagged, the earth’s unhappiness left to drown. That’s all, he murmurs. She feels it tighten at the beginning of each new phrase, pushing the air up through him. His throat floods with it. Emily closes her eyes. She drew a picture in my mind. She feels his eyes on her face, patient, and his voice, soft and raw, hums into her skin. I could see it, you know, the demon land in her old wrinkled face. Its ruinous footprint. He leans down, breathes across her cheek. His nose grazes her like a blade. She shivers. I wanted to see it.

You aren’t talking about her. Emily’s face turns into the shape of his mouth. She slides her wrists, her hands, through his fingers. This isn’t your mother. She links her fingers through his. This is the maid you’re talking about. The old maid who made you curious. I want to know about your mother. Why did you tell me those things?

He chuckles. I wondered if I would kill someone here. If I would kill my first. If the land would make me do it. I have an affinity for islands.

I know. Yes, you do. The smile swims onto her face and drowns there. Or maybe they have an affinity for you.

But it didn’t. He leaves a kiss, chaste, on the fullest part of her cheek. It didn’t. It only made me bored.

The room is green. Moldy. The light is moldy. It smells good, though, like plants stirring in their sleep, opening flowers to the night. Emily runs a slow finger up his spine. She lingers the shapes of the vertebrae beneath, a row of spikes buried.

She wasn’t interesting. She was boring. My mother. Lacking any original thought, any internal direction, she was the victim of other people’s desire. Her life…it was empty.

His bones soft, rounded at the tips, a line of stepping-stones from pelvis to brain. Her desire for you? Her deviance wasn’t enough to make her interesting?

George balances on his forearms. She wasn’t hungry enough. He lowers his face, leaves a kiss on Emily’s neck. She had no drive to do anything. She was a waste of air. She was good for the money. All that money, kept cozy in the family. With one hand he unfastens Emily’s buttons. That’s what she was good for. That’s what she was. She wouldn’t have done it. She had no gravity. The fabric loosens. No strength. But she wanted to. Yes. I’m sure of it.

Emily watches his fingers on the blouse, hot and hard, dexterous and strong against the soft red cotton, the tiny buttons. He parts it down the middle. Her breasts are familiar and strange, the skin grayish, cold, her nipples pointed, dark in the wash of moldy light. She sighs. The bed creaks. Her skin remembers his mouth, his tongue. His breath is familiar. He kisses past her ribs, traces the downward slope to her belly. She inhales, pushing the skin up to his mouth. She curls a hand around the back of his head. She can’t see past the texture of his hair. Each kiss evaporate, chilling the skin left behind. She strokes his upper arm. Did you want her to? she murmurs. Did you want her to try it?

George rests his cheek on her belly. He tilts his head back, looks up at her. The greenish tint weaves into the shadows of his expression, making them by turns hungry and careful. Sometimes. I wondered what she would do. How she would do it, if she was going to. I wanted to see it. I was curious.

Emily rests her curled fingers in his hair. She was wary of you. She smiles a little. Your mother, the one who adopted you. She couldn’t make sense of you. Wary of you and afraid of you.

He nods.

It was good, though, wasn’t it? Her fear, her trepidation, how she made room for it, how it pulled her behavior out of true, even if it was subtle. It was nice, yes? She brushes hair off his forehead. It made you feel…I don’t know. Real?

He grins. You’re very pleased with yourself.

Emily shifts, tucking one hands behind her head. She looks down into his face. What happened here?

Nothing. He settles his head like he wants to sleep. His voice rumbles into her flesh. The maid and my mother, they’re interchangeable.